Life is Composed of Meetings and Partings
by Morbidocity
Summary: John has moved on. It's as simple as that.


Time is strenuous as always, long and wearing heavily on his shoulders every passing moment of every passing day. The months have melted together and formed into a year; a year of hotel rooms, a year of cheap meals and little sleep, a year of hiding.

He looks nothing more than the ghost of his former self; eyes are bloodshot from lack of sleep and dark bags have become prominent under his eyes. He's paler than he should be and thinner too, without the aid of his friends to regulate his eating and sleeping patterns he often loses track. It's far from healthy and he makes a note to start at least trying to keep healthier habits, to get just a few more hours of sleep (it wouldn't take away from his schedule really) and to eat at least two meals a day instead of the one that he eats only when the hunger becomes near crippling.

The streets are dark, ominous almost with the thick fog that settles over London's streets in the dead of night. It's just enough to keep his presence masked and not give away the one truth that the world couldn't handle right now; Sherlock Holmes is alive. In fact, he was never really dead to begin with. The illusion of his death had fooled many, a good 75% of the world's population he would venture to say, but to that remaining 25% Sherlock Holmes would never die in memory.

'I believe in Sherlock Holmes.'

Sherlock had seen that saying scribbled on subway walls, written in the bathroom stalls and protested at every derogatory convention hosted. It was painted in vibrant lettering across trains and stenciled on big businesses all over the world from America to England to Japan. So Sherlock Holmes never would die, his memory would remain.

A light flickers off across the street and only moments later a door opens and a slender male steps out onto the sidewalk. He's just the way that Sherlock remembers except... the limp has returned. He'd known that it would, however, it was purely psychological and without Sherlock there to give John's life some sort of excitement the doctor's mental control over the limp had failed.

Truth is, he shouldn't be here right now. It's far too risky and anyone could see him at any moment but it's something that he had felt he needed to do. It's a silly thing, human nature. That closure that a soul needs, the reassurance that one's friends are faring well, it's all something that he isn't used to and it's a strange feeling biting at his core. It's been a whole year since he'd seen him; his best friend. He needs to know that he's alright, that he's faring well. Sherlock tells himself that he'd return only when his goal is complete or when John shows signs of regressing in his mental stability.

He's about to cross the street and reunite himself with his friend (and fix that limp) when a car pulls up alongside the waiting John and Sherlock can see the silhouette of a thin woman behind the driver's seat of the vehicle. The smile that paints across John's face is heart-throbbing and he offers no hesitation as he pulls on the cardoor and slips into the vehicle to join her.

The Mind Palace has always been filled with little rooms that linked to John, rooms filled with compiled information on his endeared flatmate, the one person who could stand to board with him. But Sherlock's been gone so long that he can find nothing in the storage on this woman, no links of dates the two have shared or how long they've been together only the last frame of his friend getting into her car. There's a bit of information there, not much but enough and most of it he doesn't need to reach the conclusion which makes his heart stutter in his chest.

There was something different about John other than the limp that had returned, something Sherlock had never seen in the months he had lived with John at the flat; a ring on his left hand ring finger. To be more specific, a wedding ring. But it wasn't the ring that gave away just how much he cared for that woman, it was that smile that played across his face when she had rolled up. A smile filled with nothing short of adoration, of promise and future and _love. _

He's not aware he's crying until he feels the warm, wet liquid roll off his cheek and hit the edge of his thumb and Sherlock lets out the shaky breath he didn't know he had been holding. Suddenly, his eyes are fully of them and he can't help but curse the part of him that he had allowed to get so close to John that such a thing would reduce him to tears.

John is happy.

John doesn't need him any longer.

And knowing this, Sherlock cannot even think to place himself back into the life of someone who is finally happy and who has a _life. _

__With tears in his eyes and a heavy heart, Sherlock turns away from Baker Street. He has a goal to accomplish. There's only one sniper left.


End file.
